Embassy Bombings in Kenya and Tanzania
The morning news on August 7, 1998 greeted Americans with a shocking report:
a truck bomb had demolished the U.S. embassy in downtown Nairobi, Kenya. Over twohundred people, twelve of them American citizens, had been killed. Ten minutes after the
explosion, another truck bomb went off outside the American embassy in Dar Es Salaam,
Tanzania, killing eleven people. The combined attacks resulted in well over four
thousand injuries, and further confirmed to Americans the treachery of shadowy, able,
and committed opponents who refused to distinguish between military and civilian
personnel. It was yet another example of the frightening and uncertain dimensions of
post-Cold War aggression.
While the “Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Places” told international
newspapers that two Saudi dissidents had carried out the Nairobi bombing, and an
Egyptian the Tanzanian attack, a public and credible claim of responsibility failed to
emerge. Investigators, working closely with officials in both embassy nations, ultimately
picked up six operatives (and indicted several others) connected with Al Qaeda (“the
Base”), a loosely knit Islamic fundamentalist, anti-American organization headed by the
wealthy former Saudi, Osama bin Laden.
In August of 1996, bin Laden had called publicly for a fatwah against the United
States, demanding holy war and attacks on American troops. A year and a half later, bin
Laden urged his followers to expand their sights to include American civilians. Two days
before the embassy attacks, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a group sympathetic to Al
Qaeda’s mission, announced publicly that the United States would be punished for
having helped to deport four Islamic fundamentalists from Albania to Cairo.
Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering would later allow that while heightened
security would have been welcome in the aftermath of those warnings, U.S. intelligence
agencies received thirty thousand threats a year, and undertaking expensive precautions
in response to all of them was simply impossible.
President Clinton, who had heightened anti-terrorist measures, did not dwell on
what might have been done differently. Instead, he declared the acts “abhorrent” and
“inhuman,” pledging to “get answers and justice.” On August 20, the United States
retaliated by firing cruise missile at suspected bin Laden camps in Afghanistan and
Sudan. President Clinton also blocked all financial transactions between bin Laden and
U.S. banks, companies, and citizens. In May of 2001, the investigation of the embassy
bombings yielded four life sentences for men involved, while two others had already
confessed to the crimes and had begun serving their sentences.
The U.S. Embassy Bombing Trials at
http://www.cnn.com/LAW/trials.and.cases/case.files/0012/embassy.bombing/ and
successive links
Bombings in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania -- August 7, 1998
http://www.state.gov/www/regions/africa/kenya_tanzania.html and successive links
Raphael F Perl “Terrorism: U. S. Response to Bombings in Kenya and Tanzania: A New
Policy Direction?” (Congressional Research Service - The Library of Congress) at
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/crs98091.htm
“Embassy bombs: The FBI trail” at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1359000/1359752.stm